Lift the stopper.
Each flacon is cut by hand in lead-free crystal and ground to its own stopper, so no two close alike. Lift it, and the perfume has somewhere to go.
Haute parfumerie Bath, est. 2009
Scent, composed for one.
A perfume made the way a tailor makes a coat: by sitting, by fitting and by hand. One formula, one wearer, entered in the ledger and never sold twice.
Scroll to lift the stopper
Chapter one The opening
The opening
Four parts, one object.
A cut stopper, a gilt collar, a crystal body and a silk bulb. Each is made for us within a day's drive of Bath and married on the bench in the atelier.
It leaves in ribbons.
Perfume never arrives all at once. It unspools: the bright notes first, then the flowers, then whatever is still on your scarf in the morning.
0103
Chapter two Top notes
The first ten minutes.
Top notes are the handshake. Cold-pressed bergamot peel, crushed pink pepper and neroli petals leave the skin fast and bright. They are the reason a stranger turns their head.
- Bergamot peelCalabria
- Pink pepperRéunion
- Neroli petalsNabeul
Chapter three The heart
Then the flowers arrive.
Give it fifteen minutes. The heart is the true subject of a perfume, and ours is very often a rose: rose de Mai from Grasse, picked before nine in the morning in the three weeks it flowers.
4tonnes of petals
to one kilo of absolute
Chapter four Base notes
What stays.
Amber, labdanum and a thread of birch smoke. Base notes are heavy molecules and slow leavers. They hold the rest to your skin for ten hours and to your coat for a week.
14weeks in the dark
before anything is poured
Chapter five The atelier
Your turn at the organ.
Three choices, as at a first sitting. The liquid, the ribbons and the flower above the flacon follow your hand.
Top opens
Heart carries
Base keeps
Draft Nº 111
Gilded Rose at First Light
Bergamot opens it, rose de Mai carries it, amber keeps it.
Drag the flacon to turn it
Chapter six The sillage
Now wear it.
Press and hold. The cloud follows your hand, which is all that sillage means: the trail a perfume leaves in the air behind you.
0sprays so far.
Two is plenty.
Chapter seven The house five
Poured to order.
Orchard Smoke
Quince, cider apple, birch tar
£16550 ml eau de parfum
Pulteney Rain
Wet stone, violet leaf, vetiver
£17550 ml eau de parfum
Gilt
Saffron, honey, benzoin
£21050 ml extrait
Sulis
Hot mineral spring, orris, frankincense
£19550 ml eau de parfum
Crescent
Neroli, white tea, clean musk
£18550 ml eau de parfum
Five perfumes, made in batches of sixty and filled when you ask
Commissions Three ways in
A perfume with your name in the ledger.
The Sitting
£180
Ninety minutes at the organ with our perfumer, 312 raw materials within reach, and three sketches to take home on blotters. Credited in full against any commission.
- One sitting in Bath
- Three 2 ml sketches
- Your notes kept on file
The Signature
from£2,400
Three sittings over fourteen weeks. A formula written for you alone, 50 ml of extrait in a hand-cut flacon, and your number in the ledger for good.
- Three sittings and two trial wears
- 50 ml extrait, cut crystal flacon
- Refills from £320
The Heirloom
from£6,800
Everything in the Signature, with a flacon cut to your own drawing, an engraved stopper, 100 ml, and a formula that may be left to someone in writing.
- Flacon designed with our cutter
- 100 ml extrait and a travel atomiser
- Refills at cost, for life
The process Fourteen weeks
Slowly, and in person.
- 01
The sitting
We talk, and you smell. Gardens you grew up in, a coat you loved, what you cannot stand. By the end there are three directions on paper.
Week one - 02
The sketches
Three trial perfumes arrive by post. Wear each for a week, on skin and on cloth, and write down what other people say.
Weeks two to five - 03
The fitting
Back to the atelier. We keep one sketch and take it in at the waist: less pepper, more iris, a longer dry-down. Then it rests.
Week six - 04
The pour
After eight weeks in the dark the perfume is filtered, poured by hand, numbered, and entered in the ledger under your name.
Week fourteen
The small print In numbers
In numbers
- 312
- raw materials on the organ
- 412
- formulas in the ledger since 2009
- 14
- weeks from sitting to pour
- 1
- wearer for each formula, ever
A perfume is finished when the person wearing it stops noticing it, and everyone else starts.
Enquire By appointment
Begin with a conversation.
Tell us a little about who the perfume is for. We reply by hand within two working days and take six commissions a month.
- The atelier
- 7 Saffron Row
Bath BA1 0ZZ - Telephone
- 01632 960 118
- Hours
- Tuesday to Friday, 10 to 6, by appointment
Saturday, 10 to 4, open door
Sunday and Monday, closed
Received Thank you
We will write back by hand.
In a real atelier a reply would be with you within two working days. Maison Aurelia is fictional, so nothing has been sent, but thank you for trying it on.